Ghost Cities

Winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Ghost Cities - inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China - follows multiple narratives, including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his job as a translator at Sydney's Chinese Consulate after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate for his work.

How is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an ancient Emperor creates a thousand doubles of Himself? Or where a horny mountain gains sentience? Where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret? Or a tale in which every book in the known Empire is destroyed - then re-created, page by page and book by book, all in the name of love and art?

Allegorical and imaginative, Ghost Cities will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.

Winner, 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlisted, 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing Shortlisted, 2024 Queensland Literary Awards - The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award Shortlisted, 2024 Queensland Literary Awards - The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award Shortlisted, ALS Gold Medal 2025 Shortlisted, 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing Shortlisted, 2025 The Age Book of the Year Shortlisted, The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2024